I wanted to like this book, since it had come highly recommended by another reader who said the author, Marge Piercy, was "amazing." I was able to keep reading the book only because I was trapped on a plane with it and had nothing else to read. Otherwise, I would not have made it past the first few chapters. Apparently, the author is a poet as well as novelist, which might account for the impenetrable prose that seemed, at times, to be nothing more than the author playing with the sound of words and phrases. The edition I read (a Fawcett Crest paperback) also seemed to be quite poorly edited, with numerous typos and scenes that go from one to another without a helpful intervening white space. It's hard to say what this book is about. It covers roughly five years in the life of one Jill Stuart, who goes to college in the mid-50s and proceeds to have what amounts to typical college experiences with men, sex, drinking, more sex, roommates in the dorm, even more sex, crushes on professors, etc etc. All through this time we are told that she writes poetry, but you wouldn't know she IS a poet, since any thoughts about writing she might have had rarely penetrate the fog of sexual encounters she lives in. Finally, our protagonist graduates and moves to New York and gets a part-time job and tries to act like a working poet--but, again, everything in her life circles around her sex life and other people's sex lives. She says she wants to work and to have a life that doesn't revolve around domesticity, but we never see her spending much time or thought on this work, whatever it is. You would think it might be writing, but by the end of the book we find that she has become something else entirely: a crusader for abortion rights.Throughout the pages of the book a theme has begun to emerge: having sex in the era before birth control was easily available and abortion was illegal can lead to horrible consequences, such as unplanned pregnancies and botched abortions. The author's way of illustrating these issues is to create characters and stories about them and then become very preachy. I happen to agree with her positions on these issues, but I didn't like her hit-them-over-the-head way of expressing her opinions, particularly since I'd thought this was a novel, not a political position paper.It seems like the author has tried to throw together a story with characters to illustrate every feminist theme she has heard of: men who expect every woman to know how to cook, husbands who "don't allow" their wives to work, the female orgasm and men's inability to "get" it, the consequences of abortion being illegal, lesbian sexual encounters and their superiority (in her mind) to sex with men, the trauma of rape, etc etc. I got to where I was rolling my eyes each time another issue came along, until I came upon this sentence on page 394: "I have a vision of myself just before sleep as a mountain composed of millions of women, keening, begging, demanding the fulfillment denied them. All their thwarted wills flow through me."This book was published in 1982 and it might have been timely and interesting at that time, but now it just seems tedious and sad.
A life changer. I credit this novel and a steady diet of Ani DiFranco right around 1995 with turning me into the man hating evil feminist I am today. In hindsight, not the greatest novel - like most 70's era second wave feminist literature, it's heavy handed and the story and characters take a backseat to the political agenda. Every horrible thing that could happen to middle class white women in the 60's happens to these characters - rape, incest, coat hanger abortions, abusive "activist" boyfriends...it's almost textbook. But it got to me at 15 and it changed the way I thought about women and about being a woman.
What do You think about Braided Lives (1997)?
My favourite book ever. I first read it 25 years ago (eek) and have reread it at least yearly since, and I get something new out of it each time. It speaks to me more than any other book, and I read all other books hoping to get the same thrill from them. The main character, Jill, is so real, which may be because the book is partly autobiographical, as confirmed in Marge Piercy's autobiography, Sleeping with Cats, also well worth reading. Her description of first love is amazing, as well as the depiction of female friendship. Oh, just go read it!
—Tricia
